Monday, November 24, 2008

Citigroup is getting $20 billion because they are horrible at running a business, everyone is reporting today. The monies are coming from the $700 billion Hank Paulson set aside a few weeks ago and is almost gone already. Krugman is not happy:

A bailout was necessary — but this bailout is an outrage: a lousy deal for the taxpayers, no accountability for management, and just to make things perfect, quite possibly inadequate, so that Citi will be back for more.

Amazing how much damage the lame ducks can do in the time remaining.

Krugman links to Mark Thoma, who has a roundup of all the Econ nerds furiously pushing this glasses up their nose. Most of them aren't happy either. Here's James Kwak gettin' all pissy-an-shit:

The government (should have) had two goals for this bailout. First, since everyone assumes Citi is too big to fail, the bailout had to be big enough that it would settle the matter once and for all. Second, it had to define a standard set of terms that other banks could rely on and, more importantly, the market could rely on being there for other banks. This plan fails on both counts.

ComedyandPolitics' plan to save Citibank was to move it out of Queens because Queens is boring. Transplant the building to Brooklyn and then it'll be tough.